Once Upon a Friendship

“I’m not sure why,” he said, though he couldn’t deny that Gabi’s words appeared to be true, judging by how many times he’d looked up to find Tamara watching him, smiling. “She doesn’t know me at all.”

“On the contrary, she knows you very well,” Missy said, carrying a tray with four glasses on it. Tamara was behind her with the pitcher of freshly brewed tea.

“Dad talked about you to Mom,” Tamara said, her eyes clouding as she set the pitcher down on her mother’s cutting table. “And she’d tell me things. When I asked. I didn’t blame you, by the way, even when I thought you didn’t want to know me. It had nothing to do with me. Mom made sure I understood that. It was just about you being your mom’s child and Dad not...”

She broke off. “Anyway,” she continued, her face reddening. “I just... Mom said that Gabrielle is your attorney, but it seems like you’re...friends...too. It’s cool that you’d bring her here to meet me.”

She was looking between him and Gabrielle as if there was something to see. And in that instant, he wanted there to be. Suddenly uncomfortable, Liam pulled at the collar on the sport shirt he’d paired with designer jeans that morning.

“We’re just friends,” Gabrielle piped up, helping herself to a glass of tea. Her formal attire remind

ed him that she was there on his payroll. Working. Because of the mess his father had made of his life.

Of all of their lives.

“We have a third friend, my roommate Marie, and we’ve all been hanging together since college. She would have come with us this weekend. She’s eager to meet you, too, but she owns a coffee shop and couldn’t get away.”

“I live in an apartment upstairs from them,” Liam added.

“In that apartment building you said you’d just bought?” Missy asked.

“The one that Dad disowned you for buying?” Tamara’s words left no doubt that her feelings for his father—their father—bore resemblance to his own.

“Yes, that apartment building. I just can’t get used to hearing you say Dad, referring to the man who fathered me,” he told her. And then sent an apologetic glance toward Missy. Tamara was still a kid.

He had no business laying his adult grievance at her feet.

“It’s okay to talk openly in front of her,” Missy said. Holding his gaze. It was the first time he’d looked directly at her.

She had kind eyes.

And he wondered how she’d felt when she’d found out, after she was pregnant, that the father of her child was married with a child of his own.

“What did you call him?” Tamara asked.

“Old man, mostly.” He said the first thing that came to his mind. “Or Dad. It’s just...” He shook his head again.

“Weird, huh? That I’m the kid and yet you’re the one who was treated like one.”

The dart her words shot into his heart took any breath he’d have used to respond.

“Are these the files you want us to go through?” Gabi asked Missy, saving him.

Again.

Someday he was going to have to thank her for that. Her and Marie. Meeting Tamara, finding out that his own father had formed a family separate from him, not even letting him know they existed, made him realize even more how much his friendship with the girls meant to him.

Not only more valuable than money—but far more important than any pressure his senses were sending him to explore a more intimate relationship with Gabrielle.

Family was forever. Liam’s love liaisons were not.

* * *

AS IT TURNED OUT, Tamara was the most help to Gabrielle. The girl had an organizational eye that rivaled her own and between the two of them, they had the files sorted within an hour.

“These are identical to the files the FBI pulled out of Walter’s desks at home and at work,” Gabrielle said late in the morning.

“He had copies of all of his home files and his work files here?” Tamara asked.